Overview

This page will guide you through how to successfully complete a Lawn & Garden Audit. 

Directory:

• Objective
• What to Capture
• Locating Products
• Aisles vs. Displays 
• Aisles
  
  • Finding Shelf Sections
  • Multiple Product Types in One Aisle
• Displays
  • Important Display Instructions
• Price Recognition

Objective 

You will be paid per-hour for your time spent working on this assignment. It will take at least one hour to complete. You will take approximately 100 - 200 photos, so please make sure your battery is charged. On this assignment you will:

• Find certain products and displays inside the store and in the garden center
• Take pictures of the products on the shelves/displays 
• Take pictures of the entire aisle in which the products and displays are found

Many of the pictures you submit will be stitched together. This means the pictures must have a certain amount of overlap. The correct amount of overlap is about 1-3 products. Here's a link to a full explanation. In order to have the best outcome, please watch this short video, and follow our best practices outlined here. 

In general, the stores you are visiting have two different areas that contain the products we are looking for: in-store & outdoor garden center.

In-Store example:

Outdoor Garden Center example:

What to Capture

In this project you will take pictures of products displayed on the main shelves and on promotional displays for the following categories:

• Pest Control (Insecticides, Insect Repellant, Animal Control)
  
  • Note: It is common to find Insect Repellents in different parts of the store than the rest of the Pest Control products. For example, Insect Repellent is often found in camping aisles. 
• Herbicides (Weed Control, Combination Control, Fungicide)
• Grass Seed
• Fertilizer (Lawn food, All-Purpose, Flower food, Plant food, Liquid Fertilizer)

Pest Control products include, but are not limited to:

Herbicides products include, but are not limited to:

Grass Seeds products include, but are not limited to:

Fertilizer products include, but are not limited to:

Locating Products

Many stores will have category signs above the products. In other cases, the signs will be hanging from the ceiling. Ask a store associate for help if you have trouble locating anything. 

Please keep in mind that promotional displays do not always have category signs. See the example below:

Aisles vs. Displays

An aisle is where the product's home location is sold. Sometimes the home aisle will be an island in the store. Most of the time this will be on a wall. A display is a secondary point of disruption (e.g. an end-cap or standalone display). These examples should help you differentiate:

Aisles 

Your objective is to take pictures of all the products in an aisle. Your pictures will be stitched together into a panorama that show the entire aisle. You'll go from left to right and your pictures should overlap

Products placed on pallets or boxes within the shelves should be considered as part of the shelf and not a display. Example below: The products at the bottom of this picture are in boxes on pallets. These are considered shelf products. 

Finding Shelf Sections

Multiple Product Types in One Aisle

Sometimes pest control, herbicide, fertilizer and grass seed products will be displayed together in a single aisle. When this happens, you should add the pictures to the appropriate section of the survey.

 

For example, if there was fertilizer and grass seed in the same aisle, you would add fertilizer to the (In-Store) Fertilizer Category Aisle 1 section, then add the grass seed to (In-Store) Grass Seed Category Aisle 1. Each "section" can be considered the survey section. See below:

 

In-Aisle:

Important Display Instructions

• Displays must be captured separately. Boxes, pallets and different structures, even if near to each other or side by side, must be captured separately. Examples of right and wrong below: 

Incorrect:

Correct:

• If you come across displays that are next to each other, each display should be treated as a unique display if they are different brands like the examples below. Try to photograph each display in one frame. If you can't capture the entire display in a single frame, take a top and bottom photo.

• If you find displays positioned side by side, and they are of the same category and brand, you can capture them in the same section:

• If you find a category that has mixed products on the shelf, please use the section that represents the majority of the products (ie most products are fertilizers, but there are also some weed & feed product, please use the fertilizer section as indicated above).
• If there is a Weed & Feed product on a shelf full of fertilizers, please use the Fertilizer section. If there is a Weed & Feed product on a shelf full of herbicides, please use the herbicide section. 

Price Recognition

For products listed on the shelves, we will do the price tag recognition. For this to occur, it is necessary that all photos are taken head-on and include the shelf tag.

See below:

If you have any additional questions, please reach out to us here.